Those "Impossible Citizens": Civil Resistants in 19th Century New England

Most libertarians view civil disobedience or resistance to the State differently than members of the general public. Many people, of a variety of persuasions, recognize the right of the individual to resort to self-defense when attacked or threatened by the criminal. In the libertarian view, and by libertarian definition, only the criminal resorts to the initiation of force against the peaceful and the innocent. Where the libertarian and the non- libertarian part company is over the criminality of State initiated compulsion. To the libertarian, the whole State apparatus is criminal.